Peter Hain
Sir: That Mr Gerhard Cohn (January 15) is able to dismiss my letter of December 4 as "nonsense or planned mischief" without reading it serves merely to disclose the incredible bias and arrogance so typical of the dedicated liberal. It also tends to confirm the suspicion that liberals prefer to live in a world of fantasy rather than facts.
Does Mr Cohn deny that Mr Peter Hain, during the Stop The Seventy Tour campaign, wrote an article in the Young Communist magazine Challenge appealing for the active support of Young Communists?
Does Mr Cohn know that Mr HaM and his associates Hallam (of the Young Communist League) and Jacks (of the NUS) have written articles for the Communist Morning Star?
Does Mr Cohn know that the name of the Young Communist League (with several other leftwing organisations) appeared on the Stop The Seventy Tour notepaper?
If the above are not to be described as Communist affiliations how ought they to be described? Does Mr Cohn know, or care, that Peter Hain, now chairman of the British Young Liberals, has denounced the whole British political structure and called for its overthrow and the creation of a " new society?" Does Mr Cohn know that Peter Hain and his Young Liberals are reported to be planning a series of anti-British demonstrations in Ulster?
Mr Cohn must be aware that Peter Hain came under attack from readers in the South African press for choosing a text from the 5th Chapter of St Matthew — "Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness sake . . " at the funeral of the convicted murderer John Harris, who like the Hain family was a liberal.
I would recommend for Mr Cohn's reading the brilliant book Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism by Professor James Burnham, in which he presents his conviction that liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide.
D. S. Fraser Harris Cedar Cottage, Porth Navas, Falmouth, Cornwall
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